Bonus Chapter: The Usurper

  My fist slammed into the dark granite column.

  Stone screamed as it fractured, splintering beneath the blow. I drew my arm back and struck again; not once, but again and again, until the column finally gave way, exploding outward in jagged chunks that tore into the walls and cracked the floor beneath my feet.

  It did nothing to ease the rage.

  Moments flowed together, as i couldn't recall when I'd returned to him.

  My hand trembled as I pried the spear from his gut. A wet, sickening shlink followed as the weapon came free, and Ronald collapsed into my arms. I caught him before he hit the ground, lowering him with a care I felt paltry, not enough... not nearly enough for him.

  Blood coated his lips. I wiped it away with my palm and forced his eyelids open, desperately searching for something anything my vampiric senses had to be missing.

  There was nothing.

  The eyes staring back at me were glassy, white, empty. No spark. No echo. Nothing remained of the second father I had loved my entire life.

  I raised my hand and stared at it. Red. Soaked to the bone.

  For the first time in my life, the sight of blood filled me with disgust.

  My fist slammed down onto the desk, ripping through parchment and wood alike. Maps tore beneath my claws as I bared my fangs and snarled across the war table.

  “Only a traitor would consider making peace.”

  The general did not rise to the bait. He stood rigid, knuckles white against the table’s edge.

  “With all due respect, Commander Ebonhart,” he said, voice tight, “we have a duty. Our mission comes first; a duty to our citizens and their holdings. Only a traitor would deny peace while they hold our children captive.”

  My vision swam red.

  I stared at the creatures before me; these pale, fetid wastes of blood and title, hiding behind ‘what’s best for the people’ now that the choice might stain their reputations.

  “I will deal with it,” I said, my voice calm despite the storm clawing at my chest. “And their commander. The war-mage.”

  “Surely you’re joking,” he scoffed. “With what arrogance do you claim you’ll deal with—”

  Crash.

  The long table shattered as my fingers punched through it, my palm following an instant later. Wood exploded outward as I withdrew my hand and inspected the flesh, shaking splinters from my claws as though they were dust.

  “I speak with the arrogance of someone who has never lost a city full of refugee children,” I said evenly.

  “I speak with the arrogance of someone whose mere presence kept the enemy at bay.”

  “I speak with the arrogance of a pure-blood. An eidolon.”

  My gaze locked onto his.

  “You are inferior; by lineage, by species, by rank.”

  He sputtered, face twisting between rage and shame, fear flickering deep in his dull eyes.

  “You... You can’t just pull rank. You’re hardly even a captain. You can’t use your nobility to—”

  I waved my hand.

  The spell was silent; subtle confusion bloomed behind his eyes, his voice dying in his throat.

  “Be silent,” I said. “This is not a discussion. It is an order.”

  He stiffened.

  “You will bend the knee,” I continued, “or your house will be the next to lose children.”

  I turned from the table, my cloak snapping behind me as I phased forward. I walked straight through the chamber doors, the impact ripping them from their hinges as I vanished from the war room.

  Screams greeted me.

  Children huddled together in a terrified mass, clinging to one another like cornered animals, rags twisted in white-knuckled fists as they pressed themselves behind me.

  Fire raged through the unholy temple. Support beams groaned and splintered as the heat warped them, blackening the stone and burning the structure from the inside out.

  My right hand was outstretched, fingers locked around a taut chain. The other end coiled around another vampire’s throat the barbed chains impaling him in several different directions all colliding around his heart, where the wicked barbs embraced the soft meaty organ.

  Flames reflected in the War-mages pitch-black eyes as he laughed; hoarse, gurgling, wet with his own blood.

  “I knew you’d come,” he rasped. “Knew you couldn’t resist. Knew you wouldn’t let them settle for peace after how I entertained your second.”

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  A hiss escaped my lips.

  “Silence, you fiend,” I said. “I will never let you go. Your petty intimidation means nothing.”

  I tightened the chain.

  “I will claim the head of an enemy general today.”

  His chest hitched with barely restrained mirth.

  “That’s fine,” he said lightly. “Without you on the field, there won’t be any need to broker peace.”

  A subtle, accepting smile crossed his lips.

  “You’ve got me,” he continued. “But you’re spent. And I’ve got you too.”

  “You know nothing,” I spat.

  The cores ignited.

  Raw energy cycled through me, drawing to full activation as mana began to spiral inward. Red-hot force surged through my veins, leaking from my pores in hissing plumes of steam. Heat bled into the air around me, the environment responding as if dragged toward a furnace; dust lifting, debris trembling, embers flashing into existence as the chains in my hand began to glow a dull, angry red.

  A second core joined the flow.

  The pressure doubled, then steadied, and a dark, ashen energy spilled outward from my body. My affinity seized the surrounding debris; dust, sand, ash, powdered stone, shattered glass, pulling it into a tightening vortex with me at its eye. The storm slammed into the temple’s beams, packing itself into fractures and seams, choking the gaps with compacted ash.

  A third core flared.

  Grey mana screamed as it entered the maelstrom, violent and alive. I split my attention; one part holding the heat and dust in iron restraint, the other shaping a spell within the core. Mana divided through the circuit, pouring into mentally marked supports and nails.

  Metal gleamed.

  Then it bit.

  Hidden braces drove deeper into the wood, nails sinking and locking in place as if freshly hammered, reinforcing the structure from within.

  The Eidolon gasped.

  The chain snapped.

  Links burst apart in a metallic shriek, the rings separating and twisting mid-air before reforming. They slammed into the ceiling in a violent spray, embedding themselves deep as my affinity seized hold and forced them outward, bracing the roof from collapse.

  Psionic force erupted from me in a thick, invisible wave, wrapping around the children clustered behind my back.

  I raised a hand.

  The skin burned crimson, claws embering as they began to smolder. I drove the telekinetic pressure outward, reinforcing the walls, forcing the structure to hold.

  My will hardened.

  Rage did not flicker it blazed like my eye.

  I’ll protect them.

  I pushed harder.

  Four cores roared in my chest. Then five. Then six.

  Pillars of compacted ash surged into the walls; smothered the flames, and I burst into fire. Steam and smoke poured from my lungs with every ragged breath as I drank in the blood saturating the air, forcing my regeneration to keep pace; rebuilding flesh even as it tried to contain the forge my body had become.

  My vision flickered.

  Dark spots swallowed my sight before retreating in waves. My stomach heaved and I retched, blood spilling onto the stone.

  It was deep red, almost luminous, veins of silver light pulsing through it, raw magic bleeding free.

  Arcane fever tore through me, chewing at my insides, shredding my spirit under the strain of overload.

  My knee buckled.

  I collapsed to my hands as a rasping chuckle reached my ears.

  “Told you,” he said softly. “You didn’t have enough.”

  I groaned, forcing air into burning lungs. Silver-lit blood bubbled from my lips, mixing with thick saliva as it dripped from my fangs.

  “I’m not done,” I rasped. “Not nearly done yet.”

  My aura seized.

  It vibrated violently, dense and unholy, resisting me; refusing to permeate flesh already drowning in power.

  I forced it.

  Muscle swelled beneath my skin, grotesque and unnatural. Joints creaked, grinding audibly as my body protested the strain. Pain screamed through me, but I welcomed it.

  The elder vampire’s face fell.

  I phase-shifted.

  The world flashed forward. My outstretched hand met his guard; flaming claws shattered on impact; but momentum carried me through. Fingers sank into flesh, tearing, goring, until I ripped free his heart in a spray of silver-bright blood.

  It poured from me then.

  From my eyes. My ears. My nose. My mouth.

  The red was gone, utterly suppressed beneath a blazing silver sheen, his blood, saturated with rare magic, glowing like a miniature sun.

  I drove him backward.

  My arm punched through the other side of his chest, his unbeating heart clenched in my fist as I slammed him bodily into the door. Wood exploded. Stone gave way.

  We fell.

  I landed atop his corpse, the impact knocking the breath from me.

  “Blood,” I huffed.

  “For blood,” I whispered. “Says I get what’s mine.”

  My voice faltered. I closed my eyes, swaying as strength finally abandoned me.

  “You killed my uncle.”

  Darkness took me.

  I woke smiling.

  A long grin split my lips as black claws tightened around the armrests of my throne. I rose to my full height, wings unfurling in a slow, deliberate stretch; countless black feathers catching the hell-light. Above me, my burned and blackened halo followed faithfully, ever-present.

  At my side stood a robed figure, draped in black. His hood swallowed his face entirely, save for a single feature: a crescent of bright white, shark-like teeth, grinning in the dark.

  “You were in there quite some time, my lord,” Paracelsus said. “Longer than you have been in centuries. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’d reconsidered your policy on granting the Mark of the Beast to humans.”

  “No,” I replied calmly. “I have not changed my mind.”

  I stepped down from the throne.

  “For the same reasons as before, humanity is ill-suited to such gifts. It has never ended well. And now… in an age this turbulent; it would be a more terrible boon than ever.”

  I paused.

  “However, I have gifted my mark to a certain young man.”

  Paracelsus stiffened. He shuffled forward, curiosity sharpening his movements.

  “Pardon me?” he said, baffled. Then, thinking aloud, “Not a human… but you would not mark an intruder. And certainly not a spawn.”

  “I encountered an unusual intruder,” I said mildly. “Or rather my father did. He noticed the disturbance as the boy passed through the warp.”

  Paracelsus winced at that.

  “Indeed. I intervened shortly after. That was when I realized he is not from this universe.”

  I turned, my gaze distant.

  “More than that; he is a creature that exists only in folklore. Not real. Not on Earth. Not during the Age of Monsters. Not from any plane that has ever brushed against this one.”

  “And so,” Paracelsus said slowly, “you learned more.”

  “I did,” I admitted. “Curiosity compelled me. I allowed him to see the true version of events my father intended to show him… and in exchange, I looked into him.”

  Paracelsus went still.

  “A memory exchange?” he asked. “Come now; there must have been more than curiosity for something so… extreme.”

  A scoff escaped me.

  “You are correct. And before you ask, that is for me to know, and for you to suffer wondering.”

  I smiled faintly.

  “What I will tell you is this: what I saw in those moments; the most mortal pieces of him, gave me hope.”

  Paracelsus inhaled sharply.

  “I intend to do for him what I once did for mankind,” I continued. “To free him from gods who would use him. And in doing so, I believe he may yet do something great for humanity.”

  “You didn’t,” Paracelsus whispered.

  “Oh,” I said, my smile widening. “But I did.”

  “We agreed,” he said urgently. “That variation of the Mark was… unwise.”

  I chuckled.

  “Indeed. Most certainly we did.”

  I spread my wings.

  “But I see myself in the boy.”

  Paracelsus stared.

  “So,” he said quietly, “you granted him the Mark of the Usurper.”